Plan B For Roads: Do Nothing

Traffic Takes Back Seat To Budget

January 03, 2003|By TERRY SCANLON Daily Press

The resounding defeat of the tax referendum for new highways has become a sort of guidepost for local lawmakers as they prepare for this year's General Assembly session. They plan to do nothing to solve Hampton Roads' traffic woes.

Finding more money for roads -- an issue that dominated legislators' attention during last year's session -- will likely take a back seat to other budget problems this year.

Lawmakers are letting highway construction slide down their list of priorities after two of every three voters said no to a penny sales-tax increase.

When legislators arrive in Richmond next week for the start of the 2003 session, closing the $1.2 billion budget shortfall will be a greater concern than finding money to build roads, local lawmakers say.

"I don't think it's going to be a priority this session," said state Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr., a James City County Republican. "Fiscal survival and prudent management will be the theme this session, not transportation."

For the most part, local legislators don't seem concerned anymore about the traffic problems that had many of them pushing for a tax increase last year.

The main exception is Sen. Marty Williams, the Newport News Republican who spearheaded the referendum. Williams says he's still working on ways to alleviate congestion on Interstate 64 on the Peninsula and at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.

But even Williams concedes that his colleagues aren't willing to come up with the massive sums of money needed for some of the highway and tunnel projects in Hampton Roads.

"I don't think anything's going to happen this session," he said.

Williams has abandoned most aspects of the $7 billion, six-project referendum plan. His goals are more modest.

He wants to speed up plans to make Route 460 a limited-access highway, which he envisions as becoming an alternative to I-64. And he wants to scrap the plans for a $4.2 billion bridge-tunnel and instead build a spur from the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel over to Norfolk, which was a key element of that so-called Third Crossing.

Williams doesn't have a price tag for either of them, but he said both projects would probably need tolls in order to be affordable.

There has been talk, mostly among Northern Virginia lawmakers, about changing the formula that dictates how much road-building money each region of the state gets. But that would probably be difficult to accomplish because it's almost guaranteed to generate hostility between rural lawmakers and legislators from Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, Williams said.

"That would be a battle royal," he said. "And I'm wondering if it would help Hampton Roads."

Terry Scanlon can be reached at 247-7821 or by e-mail at tscanlon@dailypress.com